FALKLANDS CRISIS REVEALS STRANGE DEADFELLOWS - 1982/05/31

• Document Type: SPECIALCOLLECTION
• Collection: Argentina Declassification Project - The "Dirty War" (1976-83)
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 05776492
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: April 3, 2019
• Document Release Date: April 12, 2019
• Publication Date: May 31, 1982

ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE bts
Approved for Release: 2018/10/01 C05776492
THE WASHINGTON POST
31 May 1982
kik ANDERSON
Falklands Crisis
Reveals Strange
�Deadfellows
The Falklands crisis has produced
some strange criss-crossing of dip-
lomatic wires. Consider this
Machiavellian mix-up:
� Argentina supports the clandes-
tine U.S. effort to undermine the
Sandinista government in Nicar
� But the United States is bac
Britain in the Falklands dispute.
� Yet Nicaragua has come out on
the side of Argentina against Britain.
� Still, the right-wing Argentine
junta is dedicated to the proposition
that the Sandinista government is a
nest of communists that must be
destroyed, by military means if nec-
essary.
The incredible fact is that the Ar-
gentine government, for all its new
public embrace by Nicaragua, has
done nothing to halt or even cut
back its anti-Sandinista military
plotting.
For the past 18 months a small
but important group of Argentine
soldiers has been conspiring and col-
laborating with anti-Sandinista ex-
iles in the southern province of Hon-
- duras. The latest count of Argentine
military officers in the Honduras
hinterland is 50. That's more, not
less, than the number who were op-
erating there before the Falklands
eruption.
Nor did the Argentine military
advisers slip off to Honduras behind
the backs of the ruling junta. The
clandestine operation in Central
America has the blessing of the jun-
ta. Sources told my associates Bob
Sherman and Dale Van Atta that
the Argentine advisers appear to
have settled in for the long haul.
The roots of the Argentine enmity
for the Sandinistas run deep. They
feed on the bad blood between the
military leaders and the leftist guer-
rillas. Their vendetta has turned Ar-
gentina into a land of assassinations
and kidnapings and fear in the
night.
One of the principal reasons for
the junta's coup in 1976 was the de-
termination to seek out and destroy
the underground Montonero move-
ment and People's Revolutionary
Army (ERP). The excesses of this
"dirty war" have been well-
chronicled: thousands of innocent
civilians tortured and killed in the
frenzied search for communists and
sympathizers.
The bloody campaign largely suc-
ceeded. The Montoneros and their
ERP allies were either killed or driv-
en into exile. Some took refuge in
Nicaragua.
- One Montonero leader, who was
implicated in an assassination plot,
subsequently became a Nicaraguan
government official at Managua's
Sandino Airport. (The assassinatjon
attempt, incidentally, missed ;the
high Argentine official who had been
marked for death and killed his irj-
nocent daughter. instead.) - A
The Argentine military consider
the leftist exiles " still dangerous.
They point to the clandestine radio
station the Montoneros set u in
Costa Rica in 1979, for example: It
beamed anti-junta messages
throughout Central America and
could be heard in Buenos Aire& �
"Finally," one source explained,
"the 'Argentines believe the Mim-
toneros and the ERP, will be coining
back to Argentina some day, JO
time with logistical support from the
Cubans and the Sandinistas."
Footnote: An Argentine Embiesy
spokesman flatly denied to my: re-
porter Jon Lee Anderson that. Ar-
gentine mercenaries are operating in
Central America.
Headlines and Footnotes:: AM-
bassador Max Kampelman, U.S:.der-
egate to the suspended Madrid talks
on the 1975 Helsinki human rights
accord, predicts a new headache
when the talks resume: Rev. Billy
Graham's naive statements ebout
religious freedom in the Spviet
Union. Graham's gaffe could be "a
gift to the Soviet system and a major
blow to the cause of human ,rights
and religious liberty," Kampelmitn
wrote in a memo to his staff, adding:
"We will have our hands full in:Ma-
drid as the Soviets quote his :suite-
ments back to us."
Approved for Release: 2018/10/01 C05776492